


D Strider Is Not Paid Enough For This

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Integrated Worlds [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M, my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-05 18:06:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14624163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: In which D has to wrangle his ridiculously smart but also extremely dumb twelve-year-olds on an interplanetary trip. Please help him, he's so tired.





	1. Chapter 1

...okay, as much as you want to take the twins back to see Earth, you have to admit that this shit's fucking ridiculous. 

_Supposedly,_ you have a free pass through spaceport security thanks to your lowkey (very funny, D. "Lowkey" ain't the word for you and Dualscar) datemate/matesprit/significant other/patron. That last is his word for it, and pretty fucking anachronistic in your opinion. At this point in time, his blood isn't enough of a status symbol for him to qualify as your patron. 

You guess he could eviscerate the security guards who're currently painstakingly going through Hal's backpack to see what set off the metal detector, though. That'd solve things.

Now, where did Dualscar get off to again? 

Kidding. You're kidding. 

Holy fuck you have been on Alternia for too long. Murder is looking like a nice problem solving tactic. 

Dirk tugs on the hem of your shirt, bouncing slightly until you kneel down to see what he has to say. "What's up, kiddo?" 

You expect some kind of complaint, probably about how long this is taking. Instead, Dirk tilts his head to look at you over his shades and says very softly, "He's setting off the alarm." 

"Yeah, man, I know—" 

"Nuh-uh." Where the fuck did he learn that eye-roll? Vriska, probably—five sweeps old and that girl's snarky as hell. "Not his _bag,_ bro." 

"What—" Oh. Wait. 

_Shit._

Your other kid, the one examining the metal detector curiously, _is_ an android. And yeah, he looks pretty much like a normal ten-year-old, but a fucking metal detector is _definitely_ going to pick up on the inorganic component of his wiring. Actually, it already did. 

God fucking damn it you legit have no idea how you're going to get off this planet now. 

Hal wanders back over to you and Dirk, cocking his head to look up at you before holding out his hand. You have no idea what he wants, but Dirk immediately pulls his tablet out of his pocket, unwinding his orange earbuds and handing the whole thing to his twin. 

"If you lose them I'm gonna kill you," Dirk says solemnly. 

Hal just laughs and nods, putting the earbuds in and heading back over to supervise the systematic searching of his stuff. 

You sigh and wonder if calling Dualscar would help. Probably not. You could maybe shoot a message over to Signless, see if he can get in touch with Psii and get you through security, but that's gonna take fucking _forever._ The ship's gonna leave without you. Dualscar's going to be pissed, your bro back on Earth might take this opportunity to start an interstellar incident—

The metal detector buzzes again as one of the security guys waves Hal through again, and you tense. The kid stops with an almost-comical expression of surprise on his face, like he didn't expect to set it off—which is weird as fuck, if Dirk worked out what's going on of course Hal did too—

"C'mon, kid, we need you to put down the tablet for a minute," one of the security guys says in mild exasperation, tucking a lock of black hair behind one downward-pointing horn. "It's metal, right? Earth tech?" 

"Yep." Hal nods, taking his earbuds out and passing through the gate _again_. Instead of bringing the tablet to you, though, he hands it to the troll, who doesn't even hesitate before setting it down on the console for the metal detector and waving Hal through one more time. 

You brace yourself for the buzz. It doesn't come. 

The telltale lights on the gate flicker from green to red, almost too fast for you to notice, but it stays silent. The security guy grins in satisfaction and waves you and Dirk through as well. 

Once you've reacquired your belongings, Hal passes Dirk's tablet back with a proud smirk. "It has a new virus," he announces proudly. 

Dirk groans and starts tapping at the screen, letting his twin guide him and keep him from walking into anything. "Dick. Did you _have_ to try to break my stuff?" 

"Yes. It gives you something to do." This time, Hal's grin is directed at you. "We have, like, two weeks on the ship. Plenty of time to get rid of my virus." 

Dirk gives him an offended glare. "Ten minutes." 

"Fifteen, and that's only 'cause I made it easy. The next one's going to be harder." 

"You're an _asshole_ —" 

"Please stop," you tell them both, and they do. 

For the moment. 

This is going to be a _really fucking long_ two weeks.


	2. Chapter 2

The twins actually don't cause half as much chaos as you expect at first. Dirk heads off somewhere with Cronus; Hal succeeds in roping one of the crewmembers, a tall bronzeblood with one of his curled horns cracked halfway down, into telling him about how come the trip of a couple hundred lightyears takes only two weeks when you can't break the lightspeed barrier.

You listen for maybe thirty seconds and then focus on giving Eridan the attention he wants. The kid's a hell of a lot more nervous than your twins or his older brother are, and you get that—he doesn't have the who-fucking-cares spirit that Cronus does, and it's not like he's been around a lot of humans who aren't Striders. He's scared of what earth's going to be like, and he's hiding that by demanding attention.

Which you're fine with providing. You sit him down at the table next to where Hal's getting his lesson from the bronzeblood crewman, dig around in your pockets to find a pencil and a crumpled piece of paper, and give Eridan the same lesson, except with added shitty drawings.

"The important thing to understand about hyperspace," you tell him, "is that it really is a different space from realspace. Or at least a different universe, but the same space."

Eridan frowns at you, fins folding down uncertainly. "That doesn't make sense."

"Okay, so." And you draw a circle on your paper, putting an  _A_  inside it. "That's realspace, right? Universe Prime, the one we exist in normally."

"Dolorosa says the universe is limitless and it doesn't have a shape so you can't draww it..."

"And I'm gonna trust what she says, cause I don't know a damn thing about that." You shrug and tap the circle again. "That doesn't have to be  _all_  the universe, kiddo. Just a piece of it I can draw. But see, in the same space there's another universe—" You pause to draw a second circle next to the first, maybe half the size of it, and label it  _B_. "—and it's smaller, right? A lot smaller. That's where a ship goes when it's in hyperspace. Now, there's not really any planets or stars in it—"

"Wwhy?"

"Dunno. I don't think anybody knows, just like we don't know why it's green instead of black there. But even if there isn't a planet where to Alternia or Earth is, there's still points in hyperspace that correspond to them. And since hyperspace is smaller than realspace, it's a hell of a lot less distance to cover." You put a little star and a dot on opposite sides of your A-circle, and do the same for the B-circle, to demonstrate.

Eridan stares at your paper and then at you, eyes wide and interested behind his glasses. "How do wwe get from one universe to the other?"

"Uh..." Okay, you're hazy on the details here. "Human ships did it with computers—like, really fucking complicated computers, just the wrong side of sentient—and nuclear engines.Trolls used psionics."

"Like Sollux's dad?"

"...yeah, he used to do that." You have to bite back a wince. Sollux's dad isn't just  _a_  psionic, he's  _the_  Psiionic, and there's definitely a reason he earned that title. He's spent longer as the helmsman of a ship than anyone else; he's also the one who threatened to slave all ships within his range to his controls and dive them all into a black hole if Alternia didn't work with Earth, instead of destroying it.

Even with Signless and Dualscar approaching the situation diplomatically, Psii and Darkleer threatening force, and Redglare, Handmaid, and Mindfang machinating in every way they could, you're pretty sure it was a close thing. And going by how humans approach war versus how trolls do it, it would've ended with two less habitable planets in the galaxy.

"D?" Eridan says curiously, and you realize you got a little distracted there.

Well, fuck. You blink and shake your head to clear those thoughts away, grinning at the kid. "Sorry. But anyway, ships now have like, a combo of human and troll tech to guide and power them.  _Most_  ships have a psionic onboard—"

"Oh, pretty much all ships do," the bronze says, leaning over to nod at your paper. "They're better at judging when it's safe to jump back to realspace than your computers; unless it's a really advanced AI, it can't feel where planets will be like a goldblood can."

(Behind him, Hal gives you a wide, proud smile and mouths  _I can!_  without making a sound.)

"The only thing you got a little wrong in your diagram is that there's not just two universes—here, give me the pencil." When you hand it over, he draws a third circle, then adds a half-dozen smaller circles nested inside it, each increasingly smaller. "There's something close to an infinity of hyperspace universes, we think. Maybe some of them even have matter in them; no one's sure. The drives we can put in ships won't make the jump into hyperspace unless there's under a certain amount of matter already there."

Eridan's blinking at the paper, fins flared out slightly and sharp teeth worrying at his lower lip. You know what that means.

Hal asks the question before you can, though. " 'dan, what're you so scared of?"

"Wwhat if—" He hesitates, chirring softly, then asks, "Whhat if we can't jump back to realspace?"

"The psionic is to make sure we can," you tell him, and the crewman nods in confirmation.

"Sentient beings know which universe they belong to," he says. "Humans lost a lot of ships before they figured that out; trolls only figured it out when we made contact with humans, since we, uh. Used to exclusively use sentient beings to power our ships, so we never had that problem."

_Yeah, you just killed off who knows how many psionics for the good of your damn Empire._

You don't say that. From the uncomfortable look he's giving you, this guy knows exactly how fucked up the old system was. And human tech wasn't perfect, either; you guess you shouldn't even try to argue here.

Hal has an expression on his face that suggests that  _he's_  about to say something about troll spacefaring and psionic deathrate, though. The kid does more research about everything than adults who're paid to do that kind of thing, you swear.

You surreptitiously throw the pencil at him.

Then you end up having to spend ten minutes "looking" for the damn thing because the bronzeblood wants to make another point on your diagram and you don't want to admit that Hal has the pencil because you threw it at him. And Hal  _won't_  admit he has the pencil. Because he's a little shit.

Your kid is a brat sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the onion universe concept is loosely based on Dominic Green's Ant and Cleo series!


	3. Chapter 3

After a week onboard the fucking ship, you kinda want to die. (Well, not literally.) 

(Maybe a little literally.) 

The problem here is that you need to keep track of the twins more or less constantly. (Well, except for when Dualscar's keeping an eye on them, which is an occasional thing, thank god. As is dumping both yours and his in one of the cabins and the two of you ending up together in the other one for an hour or two.) _Another_ problem is that it's standard operating procedure to slowly adjust the day/night schedule from Alternia normal to Earth normal, on trips between the two planets. 

Which means you don't sleep. 

Which means you are _tired_ as _fuck._ Dualscar thinks it's hilarious, even if you do pass out in the middle of a makeout session and wake up twenty minutes later in his arms and hella confused. He doesn't have quite as much of a problem with this shit as you do; something about trolls adapting to days of more widely varying length. You think. And Hal's designed to be able to regulate his own rest periods, so he has absolutely no problem. Dirk...well, he still doesn't always sleep right anyway. This is just another period of imbalance, one that doesn't bother him as much as usual because he can look at something outside himself, point at it and say _this is why things are wrong._

But anyway, the end result of this is that you utterly fail to sleep for about forty hours, despite Dualscar's best efforts to wear you out and the offer of sleep meds from the onboard doctor. (You enthusiastically accept the former and politely refuse the latter. Your family has a tendency to react badly to mood alterents and drugs; better to not test that kinda thing right now.) When you do crash, you crash _hard_ ; you just hope Dirk and Hal don't get up to anything while you're out. 

Predictably, that hope is unfulfilled, because you're roused from a sleep that should be pretty fucking unbreakable, to the sound of a whispered argument. For a second you just lie there, trying to puzzle out why the fuck you're not dead to the world right now.

"—I _told_ you you couldn't do it, now give me the tablet—" 

"Fuck you, Hal, I can get it, and even if I can't you're _not_ touching my stuff again—" 

"Dumbass, I need to, because _you_ introduced an _imbalance,_ it's not my fault your stupid meat body can't feel it—" 

"I know something's wrong, I'm _trying_ to fix it—fuck!" 

Dirk's voice rises slightly in panic, and Hal immediately shushes him. Your sleep-muddled brain isn't making one lick of sense out of this. 

Actually, wait. Imbalance. Imbalances are very fucking bad, at least on a fucking _ship_ in _hyperspace,_ because when the term "imbalance" is used in regards to spaceships it usually means one fucking thing. 

Fucked up hyperdrive. 

And if you force yourself to concentrate, you can _feel_ that something ain't fucking right. It's like a ringing in your ears, the sound of white noise shifted into the ultra- or sub-sonic ranges, a pulse that's a hair out of beat from what it should be. 

'Course, it only takes a bit more than a hair to end up killing everyone onboard. 

You groan and roll towards the edge of the bed. Unfortunately for you, this bed is both narrower and further off the floor than most of the places you slept on Alternia, which means that what you actually do is roll _off_ the edge of the bed. 

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick that one hurt.

Both kids go silent when you hit the floor, and as you pick yourself up and rub your eyes, you see Dirk peek up over the back of the chair they're hiding behind. His orange-gold eyes widen when he sees you've spotted him—the kid knows he's about to be in deep shit. 

As he ducks back down, you step across and frown down at him and Hal both, trying not to wince as the pulse of the messed-up hyperdrive keeps pulsing in your chest. "Alright, I'm not even gonna ask how the fuck—" 

"He did it," Hal volunteers immediately, pointing at Dirk, who splutters and almost drops his tablet. 

"Only because you bet I couldn't get into the software! You're the one—" 

"Guys, I don't even want to know." You shake your head and press the heel of your hand against your eyes until you see stars. "Fix it. Now. Work together, because you got two fucking minutes before I go find whoever passes for a captain on this ship and have him toss you both in space jail." 

They go quiet for a second; then you hear more muttering between them as they start undoing whatever it is they did. 

You start hunting for your shoes, and try not to think about the fact that if anybody figures out what's fucking up the hyperdrive, you're _definitely_ going to be the one who ends up in the brig. If this ship even has a brig. You're pretty sure it's either Earth military surplus, repurposed after the short and messy war ended, or Alternian/Earth hybrid tech, which means it would've been built on Alternia, by trolls, _possibly_ with the assumption that anyone committing an offense serious enough to be shoved in a cell for might as well just be shoved into an airlock set to cycle to vacuum. 

Hoo boy. At least Dualscar will make sure the twins get to Earth safe, if something does happen...

The ship does that not-quite-shuddering thing again, and you blink and tune back in to what you're doing. You managed to find and put on your shoes while you were zoned out, and get out Hal's bag, shove some of his stuff in it. Not sure _why_ you're doing that, though.

Well, figure that out in a minute. Hal and Dirk are both watching you, the tablet set aside on the floor and apparently forgotten for a moment. Hopefully, that means they fixed whatever they did to the hyperdrive... "C'mon, brats. Up." 

At that, Dirk scrambles right to his feet, but Hal crosses his arms and stares up at you in obvious defiance, even if his lower lip is trembling a little. "Why?" 

He's scared, and you feel kinda bad about that, but then again he did just almost get everyone on the ship killed. So you frown right back at him, stepping over to snag the tablet off the floor and tossing it over onto your bed. "Dude, you're kinda not in a position to ask questions." 

"Still gonna." 

"Nope." You do have to admire the kid, though. Brave, if not all that smart sometimes. Although he _does_ have enough sense to cooperate, when you lean down to hook a hand under his arm and haul him to his feet, not letting go as you pull both him and Dirk out the door and into the hallway.

* * *

Surprisingly enough, the door to the Amporas' cabin opens after only a couple knocks, and Dualscar's half-dressed when he opens it, violet eyes wide and a little bit concerned as he keeps fumbling with the buttons to his white shirt. "D. What's going on? I felt the hyperdrive—" 

"Babe, I love you, but you're gonna have to just take my word for it that it's okay now." Well, probably okay. You pull the twins around into the doorway, not letting them use you to hide behind. "And while we're on the subject of shit I need you to take, I wanna switch one of mine for one of yours. Your choice which, both ways." 

The eyebrow that's trisected by that doubled white streak from his scar goes up at that, and he barely spares the kids a glance before taking a step forward to examine your face more closely. "You sure you didn't hit your head, Strider?" 

"You can't split us up!" Dirk protests, looking up at you with an expression that you're going to classify as horror. After all, you really don't force your kids to be apart all that often, especially when they're somewhere that's kinda new. And the ship definitely qualifies as new, even after a bit more than a week. 

But then again, Dirk and Hal cause exponentially more trouble when they're together, and you need a fucking breather from their shenanigans. 

"I didn't hit my head," you confirm to Dualscar. 

"But you want me to take _one_ of your kids." 

"Yes." 

"You're sure about this." 

"Fucking hell, Dualscar, these two just about stranded us in hyperspace or blew the goddamn ship up or something; you really want to wrangle both of 'em? 'cause if you do, I'm totally down with that." 

Okay, now it's the violetblood's turn to give you a horrified look. "You're kidding." 

"Nope." Jesus, you want to go back to sleep. 

"...ah." He shakes his head slowly, horror melting to bewilderment and then resignation as he studies your twins (who're trying to hide behind you again) for a moment. Then he nods, reaching out to put a hand on Hal's shoulder, steering him into the room. "Cronus?" 

"Yep?" The kid steps up next to his dad almost immediately, yellow eyes bright and intrigued at whatever's going on. He's also got a stuffed toy snake wound up in his horns; you have to bite your lip to keep from laughing at him. _So_ fucking cute. 

"You up for a sleepover with Dirk?" Dualscar asks, waiting for Cronus's enthusiastic nod before he gives the kid a little shove out into the hallway. "Listen to D, alright?" 

That gets another nod. You just hope he actually abides by that promise, because no way are you dealing with any other shenanigans tonight. Just sleep, for the next six hours or so.

* * *

What actually happens is that you wake up and hear small miserable noises in the dark, and the sound of a young seadweller's unskilled attempts to croon soothingly, and admit to yourself that you kind of should have expected this. The main question here is, can you maneuver from your bed to Dirk's in the dark, or are you going to have to turn on a light? 

The answer turns out to be that you can do it without a light, but you're going to walk into at least three things, possibly making your shin bleed. Oh, well. By the time that you get over to Dirk's bed, he and Cronus have gone quiet; the former's probably stifling himself and the latter's shutting up because Dirk whispered for him to. 

"Yo, kiddo." But your kid whimpers at your murmured greeting, latching onto your arm as you feel around for him and clinging like he's six years old again. Damn, he really doesn't do well alone, does he? 

You wonder if Hal's giving Dualscar the same treatment. You kind of hope not, but you trust your matesprit to take good care of him if he is panicking. It'll be okay. 

"Dirk, turn me loose." 

"Nuh-uh." 

"Can't pick you up if you don't gimme my arm, you know." That one does get you results, in the form of him loosening his grip just enough that you can pry him off, scoop him up off the bed and into your arms. "Cro, I know you were all cuddled up with him; c'mon over and sleep with us if you want." That's answered with a quiet laugh and nothing else, but as soon as you settle down on your own bed with Dirk on your lap, there's a cooler-than-human-temperature presence next to you, squirming his way into a comfortable spot. "Dirk? What's up?" 

"Dream." The kid shifts, wrapping one arm around your neck and the other around Cronus, taking a shaky breath as he leans into you. "The—bad ones, the kind Hal—talks me out of. He's good at it; we still—still kind of think like each other a little..." 

"Mhm." Hal's very good at handling his brother's nightmares, despite his denials that he dreams himself. Some of it might be the shared brainpatterns, but you kind of want to say that there's more to it than that. "Wanna talk about it?" 

Dirk makes a sound that you _know_ he picked up from trolls—a low, uneasy whine in the back of his throat. "We landed on Earth, and Hal was gone. You said...we didn't take him with us. He wasn't on the ship. You said he wasn't _ever_ on the ship, wasn't—he's coming back, right? You're not really trading him for Cronus, I know it's fucking _stupid_ to think you really would, but I'm—tired, scared, he's not _here_ —" 

"Ah, fuck, Dirk." Dammit. Now _you're_ going to cry, just from hearing and feeling your kid trying not to start sobbing. "Yeah. Yeah, man, 'm not leaving him anywhere, don't worry. It's okay." 

"He's just vwith dad," Cronus chimes in, nuzzling against your arm and Dirk's shoulder. "You know he's safe." He snorts, shaking his head a little, and adds, "Besides, I'm pretty sure dad vwants me back, and no vway is D givwing me up unless he gets something for me. I'm _vwaluable._ " 

Either Cro's unique pronunciation of that last word or the proud emphasis he puts on it coaxes a tired laugh out of Dirk, and you relax a little. You're not going to have to go wake up Dualscar to retrieve Hal after all. 

"You're _something,_ all right," Dirk agrees, and reaches over to shove at Cronus's shoulder. 

"Hey, don't you two start scuffling. I can and will kick you off the bed." 

"No you vwon't." 

"Better not test that hypothesis, kiddo. Now c'mon and get settled; you both need to go back to sleep."


End file.
